Official blog of Gurcharan Das. He is the author of India Grows at Night: A Liberal Case for a Strong State (Penguin 2012);The Difficulty of Being Good: On the Subtle Art of Dharma (2009),India Unbound (2000),a novel,A Fine Family (1990),a book of essays The Elephant Paradigm (2002) & an anthology of plays,Three plays (2003). He writes a regular column for the Times of India and 5 Indian language papers and occasional pieces for the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and Time magazine.

Sunday, July 08, 2012

Andimuthu
Raja, former telecom minister, having spent 15 months in jail under trial in
the 2G spectrum scam, received a hero’s welcome in Chennai a few weeks ago. The
ecstatic crowds burst firecrackers for a man who was largely responsible for
his party's defeat in Tamil Nadu’s election, demolishing India’s image in the
eyes of the world, and bringing the government of India to its knees. Even
bigger celebrations are planned next week when he visits his Nilgiris
constituency and his hometown, Perambalur. What explains Raja’s popularity is
the ‘rule of life’, which may actually decide who will be Prime Minister in
2014.

Justice V R Krishna
Iyer of the Supreme Court made a distinction between the ‘rule of law’ and the
‘rule of life’. In a judgment in 1975, he used this distinction to uphold the
election of a Muslim candidate who had won supposedly by appealing to his Hindu
constituents that his mother was Hindu. It was a sectarian appeal and contrary
to the law. But Justice Iyer gave greater weight to the primordial, irrational
realities of social relations in day-to-day life. In his mind, this sometimes
trumped the higher, rational ideals embodied in the rule of law and the
Constitution. To do otherwise, he felt, would mean not listening to the voice
of the people.

Justice Iyer was
wrong —it is dangerous for a judge not to uphold the rule of law. The judge was
articulating, however, the ever-present tension between a universal ‘rule of
law’ and an insular ‘rule of life’ at the heart of India’s democracy. The human
DNA is imprinted with a natural propensity to favour family, friends and
community. These loyalties invite corruption and nepotism in the absence of
strong incentives in favour of impartiality. The social anthropologist, Ernest
Gellner, labelled it ‘tyranny of cousins’. The historian David Gilmartin
equates the ‘rule of life’ tosva-dharma, duties to one’s
family, caste and community. In contrast, the rule of law is akin tosadharana dharma, duties which reflect the higher, universal ideals of the
Constitution.

The great
achievement of our Constitution was to create strong incentives to behave
impersonally in public life. But India’s political parties have become family
firms. They are overflowing with relatives and cronies, thus undermining the
impartial principle. This is at a time, ironically, when our best companies are
managed by professionals from outside the family. Almost a third of India's
parliamentarians in 2009 had a hereditary connection, according to Patrick
French in India: A Portrait. Every MP under the age of 30 had inherited a seat;
more than twothirds of the 66 MPs under age 40 were hereditary; every Congress
MP under the age of 35 was hereditary. Because of the ‘tyranny of cousins’
merit does not prevail. Since there is no democracy inside any party, the
inheritors often behave like feudal lords. Napoleon would have called these
mediocrities “hereditary asses, imbeciles, and this curse of the nation.” This
is why it is so difficult to come up with a leader for 2014.

The hope for the
2014 election may, however, lie with some of our best performing states (such
as Bihar) whose leaders did not inherit the mantle and came up through merit.
But Sukhbir Badal, heir to the Akali Dal, put up a spirited defence of dynastic
leaders. Soon after his party retained power in February 2012, he said, “I have
lineage and this is a huge plus, but the post is not hereditary. If I fail to
deliver, I will be voted out the next time.” Yes, the distinction between
legacy and dynasty is useful, but it’s not enough consolation. India’s “tyranny
of cousins” has drastically reduced our options for merit-based leadership in
2014.

Raja was asked if
he was surprised by the hero’s welcome he received in Chennai. “No”, he
replied, “It was natural”. As natural, perhaps, as passing along hundreds of
crores of ill-gotten money allegedly to the Karunanidhi family. Katherine
Hepburn’s advice inThe African Queenwas really meant for Raja rather than Humphrey
Bogart. "Nature is what we are put in this world to rise above," she
said. Leaders of all our political family firms might ponder over it.

About Me

Gurcharan Das has recently published a new book, India Grows at Night: A liberal case for a strong state (Penguin 2012). He is also general editor for a 15 volume series, The Story of Indian Business (Penguin) of which three volumes have already appeared.
He is the author of The Difficulty of Being Good: On the subtle art of dharma (Penguin 2009) which interrogates the epic, Mahabharata, in order to answer the question, ‘why be good?’ His international bestseller, India Unbound, is a narrative account of India from Independence to the global information age, and has been published in 17 languages and filmed by BBC. He writes regular column for several news papers and periodic guest columns for the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, and Newsweek. Gurcharan Das graduated with honors from Harvard University in Philosophy, Politics and Sanskrit. He later attended Harvard Business School. He was CEO of Procter & Gamble India and later Managing Director, Procter & Gamble Worldwide (Strategic Planning). In 1995, he took early retirement to become a full time writer.
Visit http://gurcharandas.org for his complete work and profile.